Forty Minutes Before the Client Arrived

We never planned anything, and that was exactly what made it addictive.

That March morning I had gotten up convinced I wouldn’t see him. It was the day of the handover for the Belgrano apartment, and my job was to go pick up the leftover samples, the catalogs, the fabric scraps that had been left in the corners. Closing work, nothing more. My husband was still asleep when I left, still breathing with that heavy Sunday rhythm, and I went down the building stairs with a cup of coffee in one hand and the key to the empty apartment in the other.

The client, Helena, had confirmed by message at ten sharp. “I’m arriving at eleven for the final handover.” Forty-five minutes ahead of me, I calculated. Enough time to get the boxes into the car and lower the shutter over the living room window before she came up.

The building porter didn’t even look up when I went in. I climbed the three flights on foot, opened the door, and breathed in that freshly finished-apartment smell that never tires me: paint still fresh, varnish, new wood. I set my coffee on the kitchen counter and started tidying up.

The message came when I was folding a rolled-up rug.

“Open up, I’m downstairs.”

I stared at the screen with that stupid smile I get every time I see his name. Mauricio. Not even a greeting, no explanation. Just that. I’m downstairs. As if we had plans, as if he had been waiting for me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

I went down to the intercom and let him in. I climbed the first two flights of stairs with my heart already pounding in my ears and heard the front gate close. When I saw him appear around the landing, wearing the blue shirt he knows I like and his hair still wet from the shower, I knew we weren’t going to have time for anything civilized.

“What are you doing here?” I asked softly, letting him in.

“Passing by,” he said, and closed the door behind him.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. Helena again. “Sorry, there’s been an accident on the avenue. I’m going to be about forty minutes late.” I showed him the screen. He read it without touching the phone, eyes bright, and looked at me like a cat that has just spotted a crack in the garden door.

“Then we have time,” he murmured.

“We don’t have time, Mauricio. We have an empty apartment and a client coming in an hour.”

“That, technically, is time.”

I laughed despite myself. And that laugh was the only thing he needed.

***

He grabbed me by the waist and shoved me against the white marble counter. The stone was cold through my pants and the contrast stole my breath. Mauricio kissed me like we hadn’t seen each other in months, tongue in from the first second, biting my lower lip, yanking my head back by the hair to pin my mouth to my throat.

“Let’s hurry,” he said against my neck. “Before she gets here.”

“We’re not hurrying,” I answered, blatantly lying, because I already had one hand in his hair and the other sliding down his belt, hunting for the bulge over his pants. He was rock hard. I squeezed him through the fabric and he gave a short, hoarse groan against my ear.

“Look how you’ve got me,” he whispered. “I’ve been like this since I left home.”

“Show me.”

I undid the button on his pants, pulled down the zipper, and slid my hand into his boxer briefs. He was hot, thick, the head already wet. I took him out right there against the counter and started stroking him slowly, squeezing hard, pumping with my whole fist. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against mine.

“That’s it, baby. Just like that.”

“Do you like the way I’m holding it?”

“You drive me crazy.”

It was exciting to a degree I could barely recognize. The idea that at any moment we might hear the elevator, Helena’s keys, her bright voice on the landing, all of that mixed with the heat of his cock in my hand and the way his fingers groped my ass over my pants, squeezing it, parting it, reminding me of what I already knew.

The apartment was half-furnished. We’d left only the living room sofa, a floor lamp, and, in the master bedroom, a double bed without sheets, with the mattress still partly wrapped in plastic. It wasn’t the most romantic place in the world, but we didn’t need that.

Mauricio opened my blouse button by button, never taking his eyes off me, and when he got to the last one he yanked it off me. He unclasped my bra with a skill that still impresses me after so many months. As soon as my tits fell free he grabbed them with both hands, squeezing hard, and lowered his head to suck on them one by one. He bit my nipples slowly, carefully, until they hardened and a long moan slipped out of me, surprising me even then.

“Quiet, my love,” he murmured, smiling around my nipple. “They’ll hear us.”

“And what do I care?”

“Baby,” he said in that rough tone he only uses with me. “My queen.”

“Mauricio…”

“Goddess,” he insisted, sucking on my other nipple now. “You’re my goddess.”

I finished unbuttoning his shirt and pulled it off his shoulders. When my bare breasts brushed against his chest, I felt him tremble, literally tremble, and that has always undressed me inside. A guy like him, with that face and that confidence, shaking when I touch him. I pulled his pants down to his knees and grabbed his cock again, now with nothing between us, skin to skin, working it with my hand until I saw his jaw tighten.

“To the bedroom,” he asked through clenched teeth. “Now. If you keep touching me like that I’m going to come standing up.”

“Not yet. I want to suck you first.”

I knelt right there in the kitchen, on the cold tiles. I pulled his pants and boxer briefs all the way down and took him into my mouth without preamble. I swallowed him to the hilt, until I felt him hit the back of my throat, and he let out a long curse, one hand braced against the tall cabinet to steady himself. I sucked him slowly, pulling him almost all the way out to lick the head, to run my tongue underneath, over the thick veins, over his balls. I did the thing I know drives him crazy: taking him deep and then going still, eyes lifted to his, swallowing around him.

“Fuck, baby,” he panted. “At this rate we won’t even make it to the bedroom.”

He pulled himself out of my mouth, tugging my hair back with a brusque softness, and lifted me off the floor by the elbows.

“Come on. Come on now.”

***

I followed him. I sat on the edge of the plastic-wrapped mattress and he knelt in front of me, slowly, looking up at me from below. He pulled my pants down by the belt loops, dragging my thong halfway with them, and yanked them off over my feet. He left me naked, open, with my legs hanging off the edge. He leaned back for a second, just to look at me.

“Like that,” he said, almost to himself. “Look at yourself.”

Then he kissed my legs. He started at my knees and worked his way up the inner thighs, nipping at me, leaving red marks that would last for days, teasing, making me wait just enough. He ran his hands over my calves, squeezed my hips, kissed my navel. When he finally spread my legs all the way and looked closely at my pussy, I was already soaked, dripping from pure anticipation.

“Look how wet you are, my love,” he whispered, sliding two fingers over my lips, opening me slowly. “All for me.”

“I can’t take it anymore, Mauricio.”

“Wait.”

He lowered his head and drove his tongue inside me. Without warning. All at once. I arched against the mattress with a muffled cry and he held me by the hips so I couldn’t get away. He started eating my pussy slowly, with his whole mouth, sucking my lips, flattening his tongue from the bottom up to my clit in one long motion, over and over. Then he focused up there on my clit, circling with the tip of his tongue, sucking me softly, sucking me hard, measuring me by the moans slipping out of me.

“Put them in me,” I begged, grabbing his hair. “Your fingers. Put them in me.”

He slid two in, all the way, curling them forward while he kept eating me with his mouth. He started pumping his hand at the same time he sucked my clit and everything went hazy. I lifted my hips against his face, pressed his head between my thighs, completely forgot about Helena and the elevator and everything outside that empty room.

“I’m going to come, Mauricio, I’m going to come,” I warned him, breathless.

He yanked his fingers out and lifted his head.

“Don’t even think about it. Not yet. You want to come on top of me.”

He stood up, took the rest of his clothes off in four movements, and lay down on the bed beside me, his cock pointed at the ceiling, shining, throbbing.

“Come here,” he said, pulling my hand.

I climbed on top. It was our position. He knew it, I knew it, there was no need to say it anymore. I grabbed his cock with my hand, set it at my entrance, ran the tip over my parted lips a couple of times to wet it well, and lowered myself onto him slowly, without rubbing, letting myself sink down millimeter by millimeter. A long whimper escaped me when I felt him enter all the way, stretching me, filling me completely, and a low, deep sound escaped him too, almost an animal growl.

“That’s it, the way you like it,” he said through his teeth. “All the way in.”

“Fuck, you’ve got such a huge cock.”

“Move, baby. Ride me.”

I started moving on top of him. Slowly at first, bracing my hands on his chest, looking at him, feeling every inch going in and out. I loved seeing him undone, head thrown back against the bare mattress, jaw tense, veins standing out in his neck. I loved feeling the heat of his hands on my hips, guiding me, setting my pace, lifting and lowering me on his cock like I was his toy.

I leaned forward so he could suck my tits and he grabbed them with both hands, squeezing, biting my nipples while I rode him faster and faster. I changed the motion, stopped going up and down and started moving back and forth, rubbing my clit against the base, and that friction made me moan so loudly he covered my mouth with his hand.

“Shhh. Quiet. They’ll hear you all the way out on the street.”

I licked his fingers, bit them, sucked them the way I had sucked his cock, and he looked at me half-lidded like he was dying.

“Turn around,” he asked abruptly. “Get on all fours. I want to fuck you like that.”

I slid off him, his cock coming out of my pussy shiny and wet, and turned around on the mattress. I got on all fours, ass in the air, face against the cold plastic. I felt the bed sink behind me, felt his hands part my butt cheeks, and then the tip pushing in again, deeper from that angle, rougher.

“There,” I gasped. “Like that. Hard.”

He started fucking me hard. There was nothing subtle left now. He grabbed my hips with both hands and shoved all the way in with long, dry thrusts that made the bed slam into the wall every time. The apartment was so empty that every sound was amplified. The creak of the plastic under us, my ragged breathing, his, the wet slap of his cock going in and out, the rhythmic banging of the bed against the partition wall. And in some corner of my mind, a constant alarm: any moment now. Any moment she could arrive.

Far from slowing me down, that alarm pushed me on. I asked for more. He slapped my ass, then again, and grabbed my hair, pulling my head back to drive deeper into me still. I clutched the sheets — the plastic, really — with both hands, mouth open against the mattress, stifling cries I couldn’t hold back.

“I’m about to come, Mauricio.”

“Me too, baby. Hang on a little longer.”

“I can’t. I’m coming. I’m coming.”

He slipped one hand underneath and found my clit with two fingers. He started rubbing it fast, in circles, without stopping fucking me, and that was all I needed. I came with a muffled scream against the mattress, shaking all over, squeezing his cock inside me with spasms he felt because he let out a long curse and sped up even more.

“I’m pulling out, baby, I’m pulling out.”

“Take it out. Finish on me. On my tits.”

He pulled out in time, flipped me over with one yank, straddled me, and finished stroking himself with his own hand, two, three times, the tip aimed at my neck and breasts. He came with a long, rough groan, and I felt the hot spurts falling between my breasts, on my collarbone, one all the way to my neck. He collapsed beside me, panting, face buried against my shoulder.

We stayed like that for a few seconds. Still. Breathing. Me with his warm cum slowly running down my chest to my navel.

***

And then we heard footsteps on the stairs.

Footsteps. Someone coming up. High heels, too. And voices.

I have never moved so fast in my life. We jumped off the bed as if we’d been electrocuted. Mauricio scooped up the clothes from the floor in one armful, I grabbed mine, and we both ran to the bathroom, barefoot, dead silent, hearts in our mouths and me still with his come dripping down my belly.

We closed the door.

“Shhh,” I whispered, even though he hadn’t said anything.

“Is it her?”

“It has to be.”

I wiped myself in a hurry with a piece of toilet paper, scrubbing his semen off my neck and tits, breathing in short gasps. Mauricio pulled his pants up without fastening his belt, his cock still half-soft. I was halfway into my bra when we heard the keys. But the keys didn’t go into our door. They went into another. There was a click. A muffled conversation, two women’s voices, a laugh. Footsteps into the apartment across the hall.

Mauricio and I looked at each other. His hair was standing up on one side and his shirt was on backward. I couldn’t stop trembling. And then I started laughing. A silent laugh, contained, with my hand over my mouth, because I couldn’t help it.

“It was the neighbor,” he whispered, and he caught the laughter too, a mute laugh that shook his shoulders.

“I almost died, Mauricio. I almost died.”

“Me too.”

We got dressed as best we could, still laughing in whispers, still not believing it. We came out of the bathroom carefully, made the bed, removed the crumpled plastic wrap — there was a wet stain in the middle that I folded inward to hide — I opened the bedroom window to air out the smell of sex that filled everything, and I quickly washed up in the kitchen sink. Mauricio combed his hair with his fingers in front of the hallway mirror.

When we went back to the living room, there were twenty minutes left before Helena was due to arrive. We sat on the sofa like two perfectly well-mannered professionals, with a catalog on the coffee table, talking about technical details of the kitchen installation, going over the handover checklist. I even opened the front door so it would look like the apartment was ready to be visited.

Helena rang the bell exactly on time.

“Sorry I’m late!” she called from the landing, with a huge smile. “Oh, it smells so nice in here. Fresh paint, right?”

“Fresh paint,” I answered, without looking at Mauricio. “Come in, come in.”

We showed her the apartment room by room. She loved the kitchen, loved the doors, loved the light in the master bedroom. Meanwhile, I avoided looking at the bed, avoided looking at the mattress whose plastic we had hastily removed, avoided looking at Mauricio. He stayed one step behind, nodding, adding technical comments, perfectly calm.

But every time Helena turned around, he looked at me. And I looked at him. And we both knew what we were thinking. I still felt the sting between my legs, the dampness of his come I hadn’t managed to wipe off properly, the burning of the nipple he had bitten.

When Helena finally signed off on the handover, we said goodbye at the door with just the right amount of courtesy. I went down the stairs behind Mauricio, without touching him, without saying anything. We stepped out into the street. It was sunny. He stopped on the sidewalk, lit a cigarette with that slow, deliberate pace he always has when something has pleased him a lot, and looked at me over the flame.

“Next week?” he asked.

“Next week,” I answered.

And as I walked away toward the car, I felt his gaze on the back of my neck for the whole block. That night, at home, my husband asked me how the handover had gone. I told him nothing unusual. That everything had gone well. And for a moment, while I served dinner with the most natural smile in the world, I thought about what was coming next, and how little I regretted it.